Partly from the terror we had of our good friends the Royal
Nauticals, partly from the fact that there were no fewer than
fifty-five locks between Brussels and Charleroi, we concluded that
we should travel by train across the frontier, boats and all.
Fifty-five locks in a day's journey was pretty well tantamount to
trudging the whole distance on foot, with the canoes upon our
shoulders, an object of astonishment to the trees on the canal
side, and of honest derision to all right-thinking children.

To pass the frontier, even in a train, is a difficult matter for
the Arethusa. He is somehow or other a marked man for the official
eye. Wherever he journeys, there are the officers gathered
together. Treaties are solemnly signed, foreign ministers,
ambassadors, and consuls sit throned in state from China to Peru,
and the Union Jack flutters on all the winds of heaven. Under
these safeguards, portly clergymen, school-mistresses, gentlemen in
grey tweed suits, and all the ruck and rabble of British touristry
pour unhindered, Murray in hand, over the railways of the
Continent, and yet the slim person of the Arethusa is taken in the
meshes, while these great fish go on their way rejoicing. If he
travels without a passport, he is cast, without any figure about
the matter, into noisome dungeons: if his papers are in order, he
is suffered to go his way indeed, but not until he has been
humiliated by a general incredulity. He is a born British subject,
yet he has never succeeded in persuading a single official of his
nationality. He flatters himself he is indifferent honest; yet he
is rarely taken for anything better than a spy, and there is no